Disclaimer: I received no financial compensation for writing this post. I have no affiliation with any of the authors or publishers. I don’t even have an affiliate link with amazon.com, so I won’t get any money if you buy anything through the links I didn’t put in this post. I’m just a teacher who wants to share what I’ve found works for me.
I’ve made somewhat of a name for myself for teaching content to students that other teachers had written off as “unreachable.” I frequently get asked is for advice on the best curriculum to use. (SPOILER ALERT: There isn’t one.) I’ve written before on the problems with pre-made curriculum (You Can’t Teach Self-Determination Out of a Box!) but since I know the daunting idea of having to create everything from scratch and individually for each student is what keeps many teachers away from providing curriculum access to students with complex needs, I wanted to expand on that notion and maybe make it feel a little less daunting and a little more accessible for teachers just starting down this path.
I don’t use any one curriculum per se, but do think that there is a lot to be said for using off the shelf curriculum as a starting point or building block. Timothy Walker makes that point very compellingly in Teach Like Finland (a very worthwhile read, but that’s a different post) and there are certain resources that I find I keep coming back to year after year as my curriculum building blocks despite the individual variability in my classroom student population.
To me, this one seems obvious, but I’m putting it here anyway. My first place to start is the state curriculum frameworks. (http://www.doe.mass.edu/mcas/alt/resources.html) I need them for assessment in ELA, Math, and Science, but I actually start with social studies, because that is the content that will drive my literature and give me an anchor for my science topics. My students are no where near meeting the standards as written, but MA provides what are called “access and entry points” for students who are not able to complete grade level work. I’ve written before about why I believe this grade level content access is so essential. (Assessing Our Place)
Math:
Math is always hard, especially as students get older. Traditional high school math feels light years away from students who are still struggling to master numbers and counting. Functional math like money and time can seem out of reach too. Yet music and movement are generally parts of all special education curriculum. If you look at them with an academic lens, what are they? Math.
My favorite resource is:
Math on the Move by Malke Rosenfeld (I’ve blogged about this book before!)
And one I’m just adding to my repertoire:
70 Play Activities for Better Thinking, Self-Regulation, Learning, and Behavior by Lynne Kenney, Psy.D.
I heard her speak a couple years ago about integrating music and play into learning and really liked what I heard. I was somewhat disappointed that most of the activities in this book are much more linguistic than exploratory, but I love her early Musical Thinking ideas, and how she builds in teaching students about how their brains work (that all important self-awareness part of self-advocacy we so often overlook!)
Reading:
I actually really like the often over-looked phonics and high frequency word curriculum materials from Reading A-Z for teaching reading to AAC users. I’m not as much of a fan of their leveled readers for teaching reading, but I find they make great content textbooks. Level B, C, and D books are just about the right text level and text-to-picture ratio, and it saves me a lot of time creating my own content textbooks! (Special Ed Teacher Hack!) Plus, they often come with reading and vocabulary worksheets that I can adapt for unit vocabulary instruction.
Literacy:
One of the first curriculum materials I was introduced to when I began my special education career over a decade ago was the Story Grammar Marker. I love the visual and tactile way it allows students to interact with the parts of a story. Literature and story has been one of the backbones of my instructional approach for as long as I’ve been teaching. For the research base for that instructional strategy, I point you at Story Proof: The Science Behind the Startling Power of Story by Kendall Haven.
New to my instructional repertoire this year is Hacking School Culture by Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray (Published just this year, I blogged about it not long after it came out) It’s full of awesome teacher hacks, many of which I want to try and adapt for the classroom, but the one that really got my attention is the idea of empathy maps. The structure is very similar to that of Story Grammar Marker, and this year I’m looking forward to combining the two into a single classroom wide strategy for understanding what is going on around us. Which brings me to the next topic.
Social Emotional Learning:
Probably the best thing I took with me from a previous school that was a very poor fit for my teaching style was their social skills curriculum:
Skillstreaming the Elementary School Child: A Guide for Teaching Prosocial Skills (Third Edition) by Ellen McGinnis
I like the way it breaks down skills into discrete steps (although I often have to edit the steps, either to be less linguistic or to be more neuro-inclusive.) I also like the way it divides skills into different areas of focus. Last year my students focused on Listening from the “Classroom Survival Skills” section, Introducing Yourself and Playing a Game from the “Friendship-Making Skills” section, and Knowing and Expressing Your Feelings from the “Skills for Dealing with Feelings” section. This year, with a slightly different group we’ll focus on “Asking for Help (Classroom Survival Skills); Using Self-Control (Skill Alternatives to Aggression); Dealing with Boredom and Relaxing (Skills for Dealing with Stress).
Science/Social Studies:
I make extensive use of google and my local library for instructional materials and related literature to match the frameworks-aligned curriculum. I don’t keep as good track of the resources I use as I probably should. (Though I’ve gotten better at citing the literature, so I can keep using the same books for the same units.) There is one specific website, however, that bears mentioning here. That is the Perkins School For the Blind. Their website is a great repository of adapted lessons for students with visual impairments. I especially like using their science materials, as they do a great job making difficult concepts concrete and hands-on. Just because their lessons are modified doesn’t mean I don’t need to modify them, I do. (Most often, I need to supplement with before and after lessons to break down the concept further. Also, obviously, I need to create any related visual supports.) But they’re a great resource for teaching difficult concepts, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t include them here.
Obviously, the curriculum materials listed here, even with modification and suplementation, isn’t enough to create a well-rounded instructional day. It doesn’t even touch on the ADL and vocational instruction that are key parts of our academic day. These are tools I have found useful to support me in creating individualized instruction. Another way to think of them is as useful maps for the terrain. They’re not a GPS. You still need to plot your own course from September to June.
